Articles Tagged withlos angeles DUI defense

A conviction for DUI in Los Angeles can land you behind bars. While that isn’t a pleasant experience, some DUI drivers end up in even worse locations.

The Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida, reports that St. Mary’s City and Camden County emergency responders found 52-year-old Charles Edward Fields, Jr., sitting in his pickup truck in the St. Mary’s River. Fields said that while traveling home, he became confused and apparently turned onto a boat ramp instead of a side street.

Fortunately, the water at that point wasn’t too deep. Although the truck became partially submerged in the river, police officers assisted Fields out of the vehicle without incident. He agreed to go the police station, where officers measured his BAC above the legal limit and charged him with DUI.

In Denver, meanwhile, police arrested Randolph Blazon for DUI after the 25-year-old’s vehicle ended up inside the Colorado Convention Center. What?? Here’s how it happened. His truck allegedly sped through an intersection, jumped the curb and crashed through the facility’s glass entrance doors, running over a woman’s foot. Flying glass caused minor injuries to several other people. Police reported that Blazon was mumbling, slurring his speech and swaying when they got to the scene.Continue reading

Drivers at risk for DUI in Los Angles sometimes face dilemmas. They don’t want to drive when they suspect they’ve had a few too many, but if they don’t move their cars from a bar’s parking lot, they may risk a tow truck taking it to an impoundment lot. Would they be more inclined to seek alternative transportation if they knew that their cars would remain in place overnight?

The City of Tampa, Florida, thinks that they will. In 2008, the City adopted an ordinance that made it illegal for bars to have vehicles on their lot towed between 9 p.m. and noon the next day, unless they have signed an order authorizing its removal. The law also forbids tow truck drivers from removing any vehicle unless they have a signed order that gives the make, model, color and license plate of the vehicle and the name of the person in the bar who ordered the removal.

But the law has not worked as intended. According to a series of investigative reports by TV 10News in Tampa, neither bar owners nor customers are aware of the law. People interviewed for the news story said that fear of towing did play a role in their decision to drive their vehicles after they had been drinking.

So Tampa’s City Council is now considering another measure to require any bar or restaurant that serves alcohol to post signs telling customers that their vehicles cannot be towed before noon. According to 10News, the goal is to encourage anyone who’s had too much to drink to seek a lift from a cab, Uber, Lyft or a friend.

Should people of Irish ancestry complain about planned checkpoints for DUIs in Los Angeles on St. Patrick’s Day? In Oakland, California, at least, their protests could have an impact if the local department’s actions regarding Cinco de Mayo DUI checkpoints are any indication.

A press release, “Fiesta Time of Jail Time,” issued by the Oakland Police Department triggered protests by Hispanic activists, according to various media reports. The release said that “In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become synonymous with festive fiestas and salty margaritas…but present-day celebrations often lead to drunk driving–and there’s no victory in that.” (Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War.)

Police officers who suspect a driver of DUI in Los Angeles must have probable cause before they can ask that person to take a breathalyzer test. But what constitutes probable cause? In Kansas, at least, police officers can no longer use some of the indicators that they used to employ.

According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Kansas Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Darcy Unrau, who appealed his conviction on DUI charges. Unrau’s lawyers argued that Officer Steve Koch, who arrested the driver, lacked good cause to ask the defendant to take a breathalyzer test.

Unrau had been driving 30 mph over the speed limit when Koch pulled him over in August 2014. After spotting a holstered gun in the vehicle, Koch asked the driver to get out. The officer admitted that Unrau had no problem talking or walking but said he smelled of alcohol. When Unrau’s passenger opened the glove compartment in the vehicle to take out the insurance information, a can of beer rolled out. Officer Koch subsequently found two other cans of beer, one opened, in the vehicle.

With dash cams and body cams becoming the norm for police departments everywhere, people charged with DUI in Los Angeles may now find a video of their arrest posed online. The results can be embarrassing—just ask Georgia State Representative, Tom Taylor.

On the afternoon of April 7th, police in the city of Clayton, Georgia, stopped Taylor for going 72 mph in a 45 mph zone. The officer said Taylor had red eyes and smelled of alcohol, which the legislator said was due to the fact that he had been drinking the night before. The officer didn’t buy that excuse, however, and turned up a water bottle in the vehicle that smelled of alcohol. Police asked Taylor to take a field sobriety test, but Taylor didn’t comply.
The officers arrested Taylor, and, using a breathalyzer, measured his BAC at .225—almost three times the legal limit.

Arrests for DUI in Los Angeles and other venues occur with such frequency that they rarely make the news, unless the driver is a celebrity or unless an accident causes loss of life. What happens, though, when the stakes are much higher? What if the person under the influence is an airline pilot getting ready to fly a plane? In short, understandably, people panic…

On March 26th, an agent from the Transportation Security Administration spotted a pilot acting suspiciously at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Authorities gave him a breathalyzer test, and he reportedly failed. They arrested him, gave him a second breathalyzer test, which he supposedly failed again. This all occurred just a few minutes before the scheduled takeoff of a flight on which the accused man was supposed to serve as co-pilot.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s rules for blood alcohol content are much more stringent than state laws for DUI. They apply to all pilots, from those controlling massive commercial jets to those piloting single engine aircraft.
One FAA rule is an eight-hour “bottle to throttle” requirement; pilots have to stop drinking at least eight hours before they enter the cockpit. According to the FAA, many airlines require a longer 12-hour waiting period.

Sometimes drivers almost appear to be asking for police to pick them up on charges of DUI in Los Angeles. They hit signs, drive the wrong way on a one-way street or make some other ridiculous move that calls officers’ attention to their driving.

Police in Riverside, Illinois, didn’t have to search too hard to find 28-year-old Joseph T. Whetter, who allegedly had been driving under the influence. All they had to do was follow the wide path of destruction that Whetter reportedly left as he careened through a local neighborhood.

The Woodridge, Illinois, Patch said that police received multiple 911 phone calls around 2 in the morning of March 19th from area residents who had heard (or seen) the damage that Whetter was wreaking. He supposedly drove on sidewalks and through several front yards, then hit a landscaping wall that sent him back onto the road. But he didn’t stay on the pavement for long; he ended up hitting bushes and narrowly missing a For Sale sign at a nearby house before the officers caught up with him. Both front tires of his vehicle had been blown out.

If you’ve been partying a little too freely, and you want to avoid an arrest for DUI in Los Angeles, you might consider using an app to call ride services like Uber or Lyft. You’d better hope, however, that the driver who shows up isn’t at risk himself (or herself) for a charge of driving under the influence.

Alex Grant, of Austin, Texas, Grant sensed that something was wrong almost from the time that Lyft driver Allen Edmonds picked him up on March 8th. Edmonds apparently braked at a green light and swerved into another lane. That’s when an Austin police officer pulled the vehicle over. Grant, who said he could smell beer on the driver’s breath, watched as Edmonds failed the field sobriety test “pretty hard.”

This wasn’t Edmonds’ first arrest for DUI. Back in 2004, prosecutors dropped a DUI charge when Edmonds pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a controlled substance. He spent two days in jail.

LAPD police officers undoubtedly have their own stories about the unusual cases of DUI in Los Angeles that they’ve handled over the years. But officers in any jurisdiction would have to go a long way to top this recent DUI arrest in Roselle, Illinois.

On January 23 around 11 p.m., motorists called the police department to report a car that was traveling along Roselle Road with an unusual hood ornament. The responding officer soon saw that the caller hadn’t been exaggerating–there actually was a 2004 Lincoln moving down the highway with a 15-foot tall tree embedded in its front grill. (If you watch the video of the incident, you get a rather disconcerting view of the car moving down the road with the tree instead of passing by it.)

Fleeing the scene of an accident involving a DUI in Los Angeles is never a good idea. But for one California man the decision to run instead of remaining with the vehicle had deadly consequences.
In the early morning hours of Monday, February 22, police responded to reports that a vehicle had overturned and landed on its roof on the connector ramp from I-280 northbound to southbound Highway 87. According to the Fremont Patch, instead of waiting for help to arrive, the driver and her six passengers managed to get out of the SUV and started running away.

The California Highway Patrol officers who arrived on the scene quickly corralled four of the passengers and other police officers got hold of the driver and another passenger. But an as-yet-unidentified vehicle struck the remaining passenger, a 20-year-old man from San Jose, who ran into the northbound lanes of Highway 87. That man died, and the driver that hit him fled the scene of the accident.